[Trollbabe] Comparison with Dogs in the Vineyard

[Ron Edwards]

Victor Gijsbers posted an interesting piece at his blog: Why trollbabes aren't Dogs. I agree with his primary distinction, but I think I'd phrase it a little differently. The topic is extremely relevant to some thoughts I've posted here about explanatory and comparative text for Circle of Hands too.

To paraphrase Victor, which I hope I'm doing accurately, the Dogs have a reason for being there which the players are invested in: the fate of the community they're encountering. Whereas although the trollbabe may or may not have a reason for being in a particular spot on the map, the players are expected to develop any investment, or significantly, any lack thereof, right there in play itself.

Before I get all critical about some of the concepts he's brought up, Victor's description of playing Trollbabe itself is correct – a character has no particular moral responsibility toward anyone or anything, and all such content is left up to intuitive, visual implications during character creation, and especially to specific moments and decisions during play itself. In my experience, one of the game's strengths is to generate a sense of dramatic inevitability concerning the trollbabe's values and decisions without front-loading a single bit of them. People play their trollbabes very intuitively and with moral weight which outstrips the corresponding content in other RPGs.

So I greatly appreciate his kind words about the 2009 text and his thoughts on bringing unjustified preconceived notions to a given game are very sound. The thing is, I think his text about Dogs in the Vineyard illustrates that very problem even more so.

Bluntly: Victor gets Dogs wrong in an important way, which greatly affects his perceived difference between the two games, and so I want to re-examine the difference when that particular error in reading Dogs is not made. These are strong words so I want to choose my phrases carefully.

The part I'm talking about is here:

They are also responsible for the communities they visit; walking away on whatever mess they may find is not really an option, at least not for as long as they want to be dogs. Or rather, it may be an option, but an extremely radical one that implies the extreme judgement that a particular community is literally damned. And whatever the dogs judge to be the case is supposed to be true; after all, they're the chosen servants of god.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone says something like this about Dogs in the Vineyard. I suspect that many people who say it learned it verbally first, and then believe that's what they're reading in the book, when and if they read it. Once imprinted with this odd concept, then one may well read all the second-person text couched in the Color of the setting as confirmatory, such as:

You are God's Watchdogs, holding the Faith together.

Or less centrally, the use of in-setting terms like "sin" to describe selfish or immoral acts in the back-story of the towns.

None of the text of that sort ever invokes external or metaphysical justification for the player-character's decisions. Instead, it is always phrased as in-setting social justification. This is especially important because the nascent church does not actually have the social influence or legal reach to impose itself on so many far-flung communities. Therefore the Dogs' in-setting authority is ultimately and explicitly founded only on their willingness to resort to lethal force.

That bears strict attention, because the origin of lethal force in play is fully, 100%, and only in the players' hands. Here's where the relevant text raises the question:

A Dog's authority
Whenever your character is acting to preserve the faith of a branch, he or she can take whatever steps are necessary, and no one can justly complain. Your character acts on behalf of the King of Life. If anyone has a problem, they can take it up with Him.
... (extensive play-situation description follows, about shooting a guy down in the street because a Dog judges him to be "the problem.")

Does the existing text carry the metaphysical content so often ascribed to it?

If you read text addressed to "you," and text couched in setting-specific terms, as material that you as a player are supposed to apply as instruction ... in a way I can only describe as believing the in-setting belief, at least temporarily ... then perhaps it does. Being that righteous is seductive, and the text seems to me to invite the seduction.

If you read it as a way to provoke the most problematic play possible ... insofar as NPCs can and will call anything a Dog does into question, perhaps tweaking that very authority in moral terms that are meaningful to the player ... and insofar as that text strongly implies your character is backed primarily by the willingness to kill those who disagree ... then perhaps it does not. Forcing reflection on the murderous fantasies of geeks – who are notably prone to cry "foul" when their sensibilities are criticized – seems to me a valuable thing to provoke.

The very next section seems to me to be placed as a corrective:

Your character's conscience and your own
Does this mean that your character can't sin?

No. But it does mean that no one's in a position to judge your character's action but you yourself. ... (extensive explanation follows; I recommend it)

Your character's conscience is in your hands.

There is no other text in the book which addresses these issues. My take is that the characters in Dogs in the Vineyard are not divinely right, either as automatically expressing God's will regardless of their subjective experience of "choosing," or as inventing God's will into existence through their choices. The point is instead that since the religion is literally transforming from grassroots and non-centralized cultural practices into a church with an enforced doctrine during the fictional time of play, the Dogs' actions are going to be adopted into the centralized doctrine as "right," no matter what those actions are. Therefore the players, as the intuitive authors of the characters, are literally responsible for whatever it is that the church will become.

My take is further that the widespread misconception – that the Dogs are either expressing or creating pure metaphysical morality – represents an incredible cop-out from the primary creative responsibility that the above quote is making explicit.

Vincent's most trenchant comment about this issue is that the GM should play as if God does not exist. A related point, which is also often confounded, is that any overt fantasy content in a given group's use of the game is merely Color for real-world concerns. That's why the text stresses it so hard as a dial, and not a very important one. Again, turning to Vincent: "Demons are bad luck, and sorcerers are assholes." One can dress those concepts up with anime-style flash and sizzle, or leave them strictly to in-setting verbiage for otherwise-mundane phenomena, but in the former case, it's merely dress-up – a stylistic, rather than substantive application of the rules.

What happens to the comparison Victor's making when that particular concept is ironed out of it? Maybe nothing? Perhaps correcting the metaphysical misreading doesn't necessarily change his point much about playing Dogs: after all, in the fiction, the characters may feel the responsibility toward the community that he's talking about, and if so, then they would internally incur all the implications he outlines, and the comparison would stand.

However, I say "may" because after a session or two, a given Dog may be harboring any imaginable world-view or religious outlook, up to and including complete cynicism – they begin naively and earnestly by default (but even then may have important doubts or counter-views), and the game system is built very well for a bit of harsh life-experience to yield highly individualized results as they mature. This seems to me to be pretty similar to Trollbabe after all, because equally contingent, equally subject to initial character concept and to the events of play, a trollbabe might begin or wind up feeling exactly the same way: responsible toward a community she encounters, to the point of feeling that she and only she can make a specific kind of important difference there.

So ... perhaps the lesson isn't how different the two games are, it's how powerful the imposition of any initially-imprinted, word-of-mouth concept can be about every role-playing game.

Whew. All of this applies in spades to Circle of Hands, which Rafu rightly places in the "Trollbabe family" of game premises. I'll post about that when I get the chance, but in the meantime, any thoughts are welcome.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

I wrote extensively about that misconception about DitV in the italian publisher's forum (now Gente che Gioca) so much that a summarized (by me) version of these posts was added to the "additional notes" section at the end of the 2011 second Italian edition of the game.  This is that article: sorry, it's in Italian I hope that google translate doesn't make a mess of the text, I can translate some specific parts if you want but I don't have the time now to translate everything,

The article was part of a "questions and answers" section so it start with a question:

----------------------
Domanda: i Cani sono sempre nel giusto e tutto quello che fanno è benedetto dal Signore della Vita? E allora cosa succede quando non sono d'accordo nel loro Giudizio?

Questo è uno degli equivoci più comuni. È causato credo da una lettura frettolosa della parte relativa a "il GM non gioca Dio" e al non vedere la differenza fra quello che i PNG credono e la "verità" in senso assoluto.
Prima di tutto, è vero che, per la Religione dei Fedeli, i Cani sono ispirati dal Signore della Vita, e il loro verdetto è sempre giusto (non che questo possa impedire a qualcuno molto arrabbiato di sparargli, comunque). Ma... questa cosa è poi vera? Sono davvero sempre nel giusto?

Prima di tutto, ecco cosa dice il manuale al riguardo, da pagina 130:

"Giocare Dio?

In molti giochi di ruolo con un contesto religioso, il GM fa da arbitro sulla moralità dei personaggi. Il GM interpreta Dio (o gli dei) come un PNG, elargendo o sottraendo attestati di moralità, qualsiasi forma prendano nel gioco: punti di fede, bonus di allineamento o altro... ma non in Cani nella Vigna.

In Cani nella Vigna, il GM non ha nessuna opportunità di emanare verdetti esecutivi sulle azioni dei PG. Ne può parlare, certo, ma mai imporre loro qualcosa come giusto o peccaminoso in un modo che sia vincolante nel mondo del gioco. Il GM non può dare o togliere dadi per lo stato d'animo di un PG e quindi non ha mai bisogno di giudicarlo.

E questo è ottimo! Questo, a dirla tutta, è essenziale. Se tu, il GM, puoi giudicare le azioni del mio Personaggio, allora io non ti dirò ciò che penso. Giocherò in base alla morale che mi imponi attraverso le regole. Invece di porre ai tuoi Giocatori un interessante quesito etico e ascoltare le loro risposte, porresti il quesito a te stesso e ti risponderesti da solo."

E da pagina 42:

La Coscienza del tuo Personaggio e la tua

Questo significa che il tuo Personaggio non può peccare?

No. Ma significa che nessuno è nella posizione di giudicare le azioni del tuo Personaggio, tranne tu stesso. Può essere un mostro senza rimorsi, o un angelo distruttore – Io, l'autore del gioco, non vedo la differenza. Il tuo GM e i tuoi compagni non vedono la differenza.
Solo tu puoi farlo.

Nel corso del gioco, avrai l'opportunità di riflettere sulle azioni del tuo Personaggio e di cambiare le sue Caratteristiche, Tratti e Relazioni di conseguenza. Ciò potrebbe significare che gli dai Relazioni con peccati e Demoni, che rendi problematiche le sue caratteristiche o che gli fai tagliare i rapporti con i Fedeli – ma potrebbe anche non significare nulla tutto ciò. Peccato, arroganza, odio, sete di sangue; rimorso, colpa, contrizione, ispirazione, redenzione, grazia: tutto questo è nelle azioni del tuo Personaggio e non (non solo o non necessariamente) nella sua scheda. Questi momenti, in gioco, sono quelli che contano.

La coscienza del tuo Personaggio è nelle tue mani.

Ricapitolando: il GM non può "giocare Dio" e non può "punire" o "premiare" i giocatori. E solo il giocatore può decidere se il suo Personaggio agisce in buonafede, in malafede, se è convinto di aver fatto il bene, o se è tormentato dai rimorsi. Solo lui.

Ma tutto questo, non dice nulla sul fatto che il Personaggio sia oggettivamente nel giusto o no.
Molti (troppi) leggendo il capitolo sulla Fede hanno equiparato il fatto che "i fedeli ci credono" con "è oggettivamente così" (e non solo su questo aspetto: giocano dando per scontato che il Signore della Vita esista davvero, che le altre divinità sono demoni, etc, cioè dando per scontato che tutto quello che la Fede dice sia vero. Come se fosse una religione di D&D). E non hanno trovato nulla nei brani che ho citato che negasse questa frettolosa equiparazione, perché in quei brani non si parla MAI di "chi è oggettivamente nel giusto"

Ma giocare così, vuol dire davvero uccidere il gioco. Significa in pratica cancellare completamente il brano che ho citato prima: se i Cani sono sempre nel giusto di fronte al Signore della Vita, la loro coscienza... non conta più nulla. Non conta più nulla il giudizio morale dei giocatori sui loro stessi personaggi. È stato estirpato alla radice il cuore del gioco, che diventa una specie di "spara e ammazza" ambientato nel West ma con la magia...

Dire che "non puoi giocare Dio" non è bastato, per molti giocatori: anche se non lo giocano, agiscono come se lo giocassero: "non lo gioco perché non ho bisogno di giocarlo, so che è automaticamente d'accordo con me". Cioè, in pratica, lo giocano per interposta persona...

Quindi, Vincent Baker ha scritto qualcosa di ancora più esplicito

"The Dogs don't always make choices that are sound in the eyes of the King of Life, because there is no King of Life. The GM is obligated to play the game as though there were no God (that's what "don't play God as an NPC" means)."

("I Cani non fanno sempre la scelta giusta agli occhi del Signore della Vita, perché il Signore della Vita non esiste! Il GM deve giocare come se Dio non esistesse (questo è ciò che "non giocare Dio come un PNG" significa)")

"Ma allora"- qualcuno potrebbe chiedersi – "come si fa a stabilire se i Cani hanno agito bene o male?"

"I don't know, and the game mechanics will never decide that for you, and in fact you will never know either. Nobody decides what's right and wrong. Instead, the Dogs do what they do, and we all get to have our own non-binding opinions about how it turned out."

("Non lo so, e le meccaniche del gioco non lo decideranno mai per te, e per essere precisi, non avrai mai modo di saperlo. Nessuno decide cos'è giusto e cos'è sbagliato. Invece, i Cani fanno il loro lavoro, e tutti noi avremo la nostra opinione, non vincolante, su quello che fanno.")

No, nemmeno i giocatori. Puoi decidere cosa pensa il tuo Personaggio. Puoi decidere cosa gli dice la sua coscienza. Anzi, sei l'unico che può deciderlo. Puoi giudicarlo con la tua morale e decidere di "punirlo" o "premiarlo" per le sue azioni tramite la scelta degli effetti del fallout. Puoi decidere di fargli buttare il cappotto alle ortiche, puoi decidere di farlo diventare uno Stregone, puoi decidere che la sua fede sarà sempre più salda, ma non puoi, e non potrai mai, decidere se è oggettivamente nel giusto o no.

Come nella vita reale!

Un'obiezione comune a questo punto è "un momento! C'è qualcuno che può! Il GM quando crea la città decide di chi è la colpa, chi ha Peccato, e chi viene appoggiato dai Demoni. E poi, il semplice fatto che ci sono Demoni indica che esiste il male assoluto, e combatterlo quindi è bene"

No. Non proprio.

Parto dall'ultima obiezione: i Demoni, per come sono definiti in questo gioco, non indicano nulla. Come funziona l'attacco dei Demoni?
"Sorella Grace ha tradito il marito, e adesso si è ammalata di tubercolosi" Sai che grande "prova" che Sorella Grace non era nel giusto...

Se si gioca a basso livello di Sovrannaturale, non si tratta di altro che di sfortuna, che i Fedeli superstiziosi attribuiscono ai Demoni.
E anche se si gioca con alto livello di Sovrannaturale, con effetti speciali, etc... comunque in questo gioco non puoi giocare direttamente un Demone. Avrai una persona che dice di essere "uno Stregone" e che magari compie magie. Avrai magari i Cani che compiono altre magie che chiamano "miracoli" Ma sempre usate da uomini, mai direttamente da altre entità. E come si fa a sapere con certezza che quei miracoli hanno origine divina? E che vengono concessi solo per azioni giuste? Sono sempre e comunque interpretazioni date dalla religione dei Cani, il gioco non le conferma mai come realtà oggettive.

E riguardo alla "scala del peccato"? Quella non è oggettiva?

No. È una serie di eventi. Legati da un rapporto causa-effetto. Ma quando il GM dice che una cosa che accade è un'Ingiustizia, sta esprimendo il suo giudizio morale. Non quello di un PNG chiamato "Signore della Vita" che non esiste nemmeno!

Magari i Cani arrivano... e non trovano per nulla ingiusta la cosa!

In questo gioco, tutti esprimono il loro giudizio etico/morale. Tutti giudicano. Solo che il GM lo fa prima, quando crea la città. E poi la presenta ai giocatori. E loro la giudicheranno nel corso del gioco. Il gioco si svolge nella zona d'ombra in cui questi giudizi differiscono, dove sono messi alla prova contro casi sempre più controversi. Se il GM sa fare il suo lavoro, dopo pochissime città non ci sarà più nemmeno la parvenza di una "morale comune" fra i Cani...

Dunque, l'unica certezza "cosmologica" del gioco, è che Dio non esiste? Beh, almeno quella, potrebbe consentire di avere un punto fermo. Dice che la Fede dice cose oggettivamente false!

No. Nemmeno questo. Leggete ancora la frase che ho citato prima.
"Il GM deve giocare come se Dio non esistesse"

Ma chi può dire se nel mondo di gioco, alla fine il Signore della Vita non esista davvero? E magari esistono anche i Demoni? Chi può dirlo? Nessuno.

Proprio come nel mondo reale.

[Callan S.]

and no one can justly complain.

That doesn't sound like a prompt for NPC's to complain. Not from here, anyway. Why does a text suddenly become authorless and the 'justly' just come out of nowhere and so up in the air for how you want to take it as if no one really said that? Godless, sure. Authorless?

Indeed it seems to compound an attitude rather than correct it, where the characters concience is only in the players hands. Ie, you don't have to listen to if anyone else doesn't like what you do - just listen to yourself and only yourself as a player.

I've read feminist authors trying to draw in mysogynistic audiences, as an example of provoking problematic attitudes to bring them into the light of self examination - but it requires someone to be in on the joke. And the whole 'secret GM knowledge' just doesn't work in roleplay. Either everyones in on the joke or no one is. This sounds like a comparison to something that is a radical reinterpretation.

[lumpley]

Another to consider, although there's basically no information to be had for those of us who weren't there, is Ben's Adventures in the Land of 1,000 Kings. He shut down its development because "people play it like Dogs in the Vineyard" and he couldn't figure out how to get them to stop.

Once when I was playing Dogs in the Vineyard, my character received a revelation from God, unasked for, unexpected, wholly independent of any game mechanics. Since the GM doesn't get God as an NPC, I didn't have to check with the GM to confirm that it happened; the GM has no right to contradict me. The GM is allowed to have an opinion about it, of course, but not to promote his opinion to a ruling.

It's crucial to the game's workings that my character's relationship with her God be NOT subject to the GM's or the other players' oversight.

-Vincent

[lumpley]

The point is instead that since the religion is literally transforming from grassroots and non-centralized cultural practices into a church with an enforced doctrine during the fictional time of play, the Dogs' actions are going to be adopted into the centralized doctrine as "right," no matter what those actions are. Therefore the players, as the intuitive authors of the characters, are literally responsible for whatever it is that the church will become.

I don't think the text says this either. How the church's doctrines adapt to the Dogs' actions is up in the air. Let me see if I can lay this out.

I'm playing a Dog, Sister May. She goes into a town, sees the bullshit that the people there are up to, and I have her declare that fuck it, Sister Patience married both Brother Paul and Brother Sweyn? Then she's married to both of them, and let no man put asunder, and she'll back it up with ceremony and with bullets.

Is it God's will that a woman marry two husbands? As you and Moreno say, Ron, we don't know. None of us gets to decide what the fictional God thinks, or even whether He exists at all. We can have opinions about it, but they're just our own opinions.

But what about doctrine? First of all, the Faith's doctrine definitely doesn't change retroactively. I think that you and everybody else here already get this. When I have Sister May declare that Sister Patience's marriages both stand, Sister May is contradicting the Faith's doctrine, I'm not retroactively rewriting it. I hope there's no question on this point.

Is she, however, changing the Faith's doctrine going forward? This question has two parts.

Part 1: Do the town creation rules update to say that a woman marrying two men is no longer to be considered a sin? Answer: no, they don't. Search those rules as hard as you want, you'll never find that they do.

If anything, they tell the GM to push back instead, to present a case next time where a woman marrying two men is more obviously a sin than it was this time.

Part 2: Does the Faith's doctrine update to affirm this judgment of hers? Answer: maybe. If you read the text on stewardship with this question in mind, what you'll find is that doctrine always comes down from the Prophets and Ancients. In order for Sister May's judgment to change the church's teachings going forward, the Prophets and Ancients will have to hear about it, then weigh it, then ratify it, then proclaim it. Will they?

Well here's the problem: they're NPCs! To answer this question, the GM needs to know a lot more about them, and I'll be damned if the only way forward isn't to create Bridal Falls as a town, with the Prophets and Ancients as NPCs caught up in the town's pride, injustice, sin, false doctrine, sorcery and murder. If Sister May and I really want the Prophets and Ancients to ratify and proclaim our judgment as right, we'd better be prepared to go make them. With ceremony, with bullets, and with dice.

The game design leaves Sister May and me to dangle pretty terribly. There are no guarantees, anywhere, that even a single other person is ever going to think we did the right thing. Not a PC, not an NPC, not the Faith, not God, not my fellow players, not the GM, not anybody. It has to be enough for us that we think we did.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Cool. Now I need to talk with Ben about his game.

Vincent, I think I'm completely with you on the basics, especially the going forward rather than retroactive issue, and on the necessity to deal with Angel Falls when word about applied doctrine "out there" in the Dogs' hands gets back to the center of things. My personal tweak on the reading, or interpretation, falls a little more toward the idea that ... if the Dogs do stuff and back it up with church ritual and/or bodies, a lot of the time the Elders back at Angel Falls are going to have to suck it up and claim that's what the Prophets meant all along.

I left a bit of an out for myself by saying "a lot of the time," such that if the Dogs' actions were to stick my craw in terms of how much whacked interpretation the central church authorities could support, then I'd be able to make the Elders up  as NPCs and go from there if I wanted.* But my inclination is instead to keep Angel Falls as abstract an entity as possible, as far out of play as possible, and to focus instead on what the player-characters think the Elders in Angel Falls must mean or want, or would tolerate, or be forced to tolerate. Besides, I also like the idea that the church is indeed quite weak in terms of real power - they don't have, for instance, troops to send to pacify, occupy, or destroy a town.

Moreno, that's a great piece of writing.

* We'll leave aside the idea that, one day, some Dogs might decide to assign themselves the mission to go and root out the evil that's obviously taken hold in Angel Falls, which gets us into 3:16 territory ... and it would be double-plus awesome. But for purposes of this discussion that's a distraction.

[Moreno R.]

About what Vincent wrote in his last post, I saw a interesting situation in the last city of our current DitV game....

The three players are my current "regular" group, but one of them (male) is rather new at "the weird new games", having joined the group only a few weeks ago, and the others two (females) had played DitV only once before, years ago.

This is the second town. The first one was a about a village where fanaticism and sexism had lead the villagers to publicly flog to death a woman, guilty of having betrayed her husband with a boy from the Mountain People.  During the session the boy did kill the woman's husband in revenge, slowly, after having captured him. The dogs quickly "forgave" him, saying that he was justified by the murder of someone he loved, and that he was only seeking justice, no matter how wrong were his methods. They did take the boy away to save him from the villagers racism, though. One of the Dogs is half "mountain people" himself, and he said that he was bringing the boy to his home, to live in a place where he would be treated better.

So, the elements I had for the second town were: the declarations of the dogs about vengeance on the killer of a loved one, some other declaration about women being able to do anything a man can, and being entitled to make their own decisions, and the idyllic image the male dog presented of his own town as a sort of paradise where the skin color didn't count.

So, for the second town, the situation was this: the relationship between the nearby mountain people tribe and the dog's town was so friendly that the son of the sister of the tribe chief began to court Sister Mary, the daughter of a local rancher. Sister Mary had no idea that the boy wanted to be more than a friend until he did offer her father a sizable number of horses for her.
Enraged by what he did perceive as an insult to his Pride, the rancher, with the help of his cowboys, did beat the boy, sending him back in shame (injustice). The boy did swear that he would have his revenge, and after a few days, he and some of his mountain people friends ambushed Mary#'s father, killing him (sin). That act did start a succession of alternating attacks from both Mary's family and friends (involving more and more villagers each time) and from the Mountain People, escalation in a bloody feud (demonic attacks).
Sistem Mary did lead the attacks on the mountain People herself, believing herself to acting as God's justice (false doctrine), more ands more people did follow her leadership (corrupt worship), including the Steaward's son, Jacob, and Sister Mary's brothers.

The thinking behind this town was: Sistem Mary had killed in revenge for a loved one's murder, but this time she's the Sorcerer, she lead the city and the killing are escalating: when does it stop being in the right, avenging a loved one's death? And this time I reversed the sides, the initial murder was done by one of the Mountain People against one of the faith.  Plus, I wanted to put the half-blood dog face to face with the dissolution of his "paradise" (the player was fully informed that, by going back to his town, he would have made his character home town a "town in play" with all that it meant. He was totally for it)

Then, when the dogs arrived and we started playing the session, things began to in a strange way.

When they arrived in the town (with a murderer among them fully pardoned because he had killed to avenge his lover), they went right from the beginning against Sister Mary. They did took her lack of "proper respect" for them (she did not ask forgiveness right away) as proof that "she is demon possessed" (to be exact, she is the sorcerer, but she is not aware of the fact, and there was nothing in the fiction at that time to give anybody that idea), and they started a conflict right there to humiliate her and have her beg. The conflict went very, very badly for the dogs (they had attacked a Sorcerer with OVER A DOZEN COVEN MEMBERS PRESENT TO HELP HER, in a city full of possible victims for the GM's nasty raises, with demonic influence at 5 d10s...). The fight ended with the dogs totally discredited, shown as "Moutain People Lovers" to all the community.

Later, the Steward's son, Jacob, contacted the dogs, asking them to make peace with Sister Mary, convince her to stop her vengeance, so that they could marry (he was her fiancè, but she had deferred the marriage "until the last of my father's murderers is not under the ground". At that time the tribe had left the region, to flee the feud, so the only mountain people left - apart from the ones married into the town like the dog's father - were the ones in the warband that killer her father, around a dozen warriors). The dogs did swear that they would have helped him if he would inform them about Mary's decisions. But they were lying, because when he did left, they openly talked about killing her.

When Jacob, the next day, alerted the dogs that Mary wanted to lead his men in a surprise attack on the warband (sighted camped on the river banks a couple of miles from the town), the dogs raced to the spot to precede them. And they discovered that it was a trap, the mountain People had allowed themselves to be seen, just to take position on the road waiting to kill Mary and the others. The Mountain People had the guns pointed toward the dogs, but they did not shoot because they recognized the halfblood. So the Dogs agreed to not interfere in any way with the ambush, that they were "friends" and they would have liked to see Mary killed.

The ambush happened, with no interference from the Dogs. Seeing that they did not want to enter in a conflict, I simply stated that four faithful did fall on the ground, dead or dying (especially after the mountain people got to them with their knives) but the others, Mary included, were able to flee towards the town. Jacob, the one who had asked for the dog's help, was among the dead.

The mountain people did gave back to the dogs their guns and horses, and went in pursuit of the fleeing group. The dogs, calmly, did gather the bodies and began to discuss a false story to tell the town people, saying that they had found the bodies AFTER the fight.

When they did read the town with the bodies, they discovered that the warband, not able to reach Mary before she did enter the village, had taken their revenge on the farmer they had met on the road, killing 4 of them in cold blood (the farmers were unarmed). It was not unusual, the dogs were already told, the day before, that the warband killed every white man they did meet.

Mary at the time had started to round a posse, to follow the warband and kill them, when the dogs still interfered, forbidding anybody from following the warband, "for their own safety" (the warband was described as a band of a dozen young men, armed with hunting rifles but not very well trained in their use. The posse at that moment was of over thirty angry villagers, armed with even better rifles, with some sharpshooter among them). A conflict ensued. As the one with Mary the day before, it was a very one-sided conflict, this time the dogs had almost the entire town against. But the dogs, even if they were clearly losing, were ready to go to the guns (they have their better traits, by far, there, they could have ha chance of winning the conflict by starting to shoot on the faithful). At that point I reasoned that the villagers, angry as they were, would not risk being killed by the dog's bullets, and gave up on the conflict, having the Steward intervene, saying "no more deads today", taking his son's body in his arms... and spitting at the dog's feet before going back to the town.

At that points, the dogs began to debate about burning down the town to the ground, being "full of sinners"....

Now, as the GM, what's my opinion about all of this? Well, playing Mary, I am more and more on her side. The dogs are acting as entitled assholes. They duty, their only duty, is to protect the community, but they don't seems to care a bit about that. All they care about is the way Mary (and after that, the other villagers) "don't respect their authority", their badge of power. They allowed villagers to be killed in an ambush, and they still protect the murderers, with a lot of lofty talkings about the way they, and only they, can kill sinners... but, really, seeing them, they are only doing it for spite, because they hate Mary.

If the game had made me play the King of life an an NPC, he would have already appeared to strip each one of them from their coat, and create a coat for Sister Mary.

But the game don't give me that power (and I am thankful for that, I don't want to be the GM that "punish" his players...). So, what should I do?

There is a "school of though" that says that the GM in DitV should not allow his judgment to interfere with the way he plays the NPCs. I flatly disagree. I don't play the King of Life, but I play the NPCs and I play them according to what I thing they would do in that situation. So, I have made the NPC react to the dogs with more and more disdain, and respect them less and less.

I also have to choose what happen when no player says "no" and start a conflict. But how should I used that? This is where it gets sticky.  Who decided that one of the four dead in the ambush was Jacob, the only character friendly with the dogs in the whole posse? Me. Who decided that the actions of the Dogs would have lead to the murder of 4 innocent farmers? Me (but it was something that the fiction already had established as something that had happened and would happen again with the warband free to roam).
So... at which point all this stop being "playing the world" and become "punish the players, sticking their nose into the results I decide would be of what I perceive as their mistakes"?

In other games, this is a line I not always recognize. A lot of my questions to Ron about Sorcerer the last time I played it were about this. About "where is this line in Sorcerer? How can I recognize it?". When you are an "omnipotent GM", the "god of the gaming world"... how can you decide what would happen, without being partial and punitive to the players with too much misfortune and opposition, or by the other hand, making the game boring with too little opposition?  (I have similar problems with the PbtA games by the way, or any other game with anything that resemble a "traditional" GM role)

I have not this uncertainty in DitV, because I "don't play God", in more ways than one. I am not God not only because I don't play him like a NPC, but because I don't have infinite resources, too, because I can't really hurt the PC is they don't decide it's worth the risk... and because if I don't play God, I have another important role.

I think that, in the same way "what you should not do" in DitV can be summarized as "you don't play God", the other things, the one you have to do when you play the GM in DitV, is "you play the Devil". (not the "demons". The Devil. Murphy's law, misfortune, the way things always go bad, everything get worse, etc.).

The first instance of this is right in the town creation rules: create a situation, from "pride", and step by step, make it worse. Think about what could be horribly wrong, and make it happen.  Make misfortune so active that people could mistake it for demonic activity. If there is something that can go wrong, make it go worse. Make the world a place so horribly wrong to grip you in your stomach.

So yes, I always search for ways to have the dog's actions turn bad, doing harm to innocents. Because if the world don't do that... why should they fight? The world is a bad place and things always go wrong, but you have a colorful coat and a gun... what do you want to do about it?

Or, at least, I was sure of this until this game. Because, with the dogs action so consistently as entitled smug assholes....  having the world smacking them again and again on the nose with the consequences of their actions is not a skillful search for meaningful obstacles and opposition. It's starting to sound like preaching, like saying the players that they are "playing it wrong".
By the other hand, I am sure that what happened was totally justified by their actions. If you let 12 angry warriors shoot in an ambush a group of 10 person, one of which is your friend...  are you rreally surprised that he gets killed? If you leave a warband that already killed innocents roam freely... are you surprised that they will kill innocents?

No, what I am really worried is not this. It's not my "GM's inner guilt", all that was not only justified, but a predicable effect of the dog's action. The problem is... will be players be able to see it?

From what I hear them saying, the players don't agree with my assessment of their actions. The characters they are playing are "on a mission for god", so being disrespectful to them it's a sin that has to be punished.  If the town want to be protected by them they should worship them, not make demands, and if they are not, screw them, they are possessed by the demons obviously... with such a point of view, I think that are seeing the effect of their action as me "being mean"...

There is a very simply way to know it: talk to them about their character's actions. But I don't want to do that.  There is still a lot of "you must do what the GM want" culture at that gaming table (most of all in the new player, but not only) and I don't want them to "do what I want". I am enjoying the game, actually, even if I am totally siding with the Sorcerer....

PS.: what happened in the last session, the one after the events I described? (my DitV towns usually last 2-3 sessions)

- The Steward talked to the male Dog, the one that the steward did choose among his flock for that sacred mission. And he did say to the boy "you were not the one. The King of life send me a sign, a dream. I did dream my own son, Jacob, with a dog's coat. But I doubted myself, I though that it was pride that had made me dream that, and I did choose you for political reasons instead, to cement even more the alliance between us and the mountain people. God is punishing me for having chosen politics over his divine inspiration: my son is dead, the alliance is dead, and you are clearly unfit for that role. You are no dog, you are my mistake, and I will step down as a steward of this city because I will never forgive myself for choosing you".

- One of the farmer killed was the father of a childhood friends of the male dog. When he did hear about that he went to visit his old friends, but he still did it in a "official", formal rule, without any warmth. I decided that his friends would reply with "go away, you are dead to me, I don't want to see you ever again".

- The funeral of the warband's victims was celebrated

- Sister Mary went directly to the (female) dog that most opposed her, and challenged her to a duel, to the death. To prove "who is really doing the King's of life's will between us".

It's overkill, or not? What do you think?

[edit: crossposted with Ron]

[Ron Edwards]

I think you're nailing it to the wall.

[lumpley]

Moreno, if the Dogs are doing the demons' work for them, you might consider having the demons, sorcerers, and cultists all suck up to them, treat them as their new best friends, point out who "needs" killing and for what "sins." This might give them the kind of perspective that preaching at them won't.

But really your job isn't to always search for ways for the Dogs' actions to turn bad. Where did you get that idea? Nor is it to search skillfully for meaningful obstacles and opposition. Your job is to make a town and find out what the Dogs do with it.

-Vincent

[Moreno R.]

Hi Vincent!

Moreno, if the Dogs are doing the demons' work for them, you might consider having the demons, sorcerers, and cultists all suck up to them, treat them as their new best friends, point out who "needs" killing and for what "sins." This might give them the kind of perspective that preaching at them won't.

This is not really applicable in this case: the Sorcerer and the Dogs are at each other's throat because they BOTH believe they are following God's wishes.

And as the history of any religion show, when this happen people start talking about "heretics", and begin raising gallows or burning stakes....

Going to the particular to the general, I think this is probably a creative difference about how we play Sorcerers in the game.  The game allows both people that believe they are following the King of Life and people who don't as Sorcerers, but I think that among all the towns I have created, I have used this second option only a couple of times, and both times for very sympathetic Sorcerers  that were victim of injustices so gruesome to be totally justified in rejecting the whole faith. I remember in particular one woman Sorceress who had turned an entire town into a sort of Hell (literally: the name of the town was changed to "Hell"), with the supernatural dial turned very high (snakes from her month, her hair moving with no wind, blackness around her, the whole package). And what was made to her to cause a similar vengeance was so terrible that the last conflict that defeated her was... "to make her forgive herself", and the last raise, from a dying dog (played by Simone, at INC 2009 If I remember well) was "I hug her".

Apart from this couple of cases, I have always used Sorcerers that believed that they are BETTER than the Dogs, that they are more pious, more worthy, more saintly. They see the demons like "angels of the lord", the ones they kills are "sinners"...  it's not like I always make them sympathetic. Most of the times they are murderous fanatics that must simply be killed before they hurt anybody else (for example, the Sorcerer in the first Town with this group was a "holy guy" who had added to the cult the weekly flogging of any woman for any "sin", and usually he did always flog the same young girl whose terrible sin was that seeing her flogged turned him on). But, sometimes, they are simply people who made mistakes, and sometimes when I play them, I see them really as better people than the dogs (even if never, until this last town, so much better...)

I don't know if it's the way you like to play it, or if simply because it's easier to explain that way, but from what you write about the game I get them impression that (citing the exact word you used to characterize "what sorcerers are in the real world") you like to play Sorcerer that are "assholes" that fully know that they are doing evil things: am I right?

About the "Making the Dog's actions turn bad", maybe I overstated the case, giving the impression that I am playing some sort of sadistic game of "gotcha!" with the players, turning everything they do into a mistake. I will try to explain better what I meant, below:

But really your job isn't to always search for ways for the Dogs' actions to turn bad. Where did you get that idea? Nor is it to search skillfully for meaningful obstacles and opposition. Your job is to make a town and find out what the Dogs do with it.

This is not enough. "Your job is to make a town and find out what the Dogs do with it" is too general, it's applicable to a million different ways to "find out what the dogs do with it".  Even the other thing said many times when people ask "what the GM do in this game", "The GM has to play the world and the NPC with integrity", is not a satisfying answer. Because it's a boundary, not a direction. Even if they are expressed as things that the GM has to do, in practice they are instruction about what the GM MUST NOT DO. They say nothing about what is that he should strive for.

"Your job is to make a town and find out what the Dogs do with it" in practice is saying "don't sit to play having a story already written, don't force the players to follow what you want", and the other one, ""The GM has to play the world and the NPC with integrity" in practice is simply saying "don't play the world and the NPC in an inconsistent way, don't betray what you had already established"

But... OK, we stay inside these boundaries, we don't make these mistakes, we don't play NPCs as crazy people with multiple personalities and we don't use force to make the PC do what we want, OK. But, said that... what we should do?

Let's see a practical example. The scene I already described in my last post, 12 young warriors hiding behind rocks, their single shot rifles loaded and ready to fire. 10 riders on the road, riding fast, they don't see the ambush until it's too late.  I ask the players if their characters interfere in any way, they say no.

What should I say to the players afterward?

The two phrases I cited above don't tell me a lot of useful things...  in practice they tell to don't change the number of riders during the scene, that they should not start flying, that the warriors should not turn into ninja in the middle of the fight... a more rigorous reading of "playing to see what happen" could make me think that I have to roll dice for every NPC and see who win after playing the conflict with myself, but luckily this goes against the game's rules so I can avoid the hassle. A more useful thing to remember is to avoid having a story already prepared of what will happen at the ambush, but OK, I don't have a story prepared. I followed these rules, and...

...how the hell can I decide who lives and who dies with only these vague recommendations?

I need more. Let's see what I got to add to these, myself.

1) I could say that the warriors kills everybody. It could happen. It doesn't break the consistency of the world and of the NPCs. The Sorcerer and her cultists are dead. The Warrior says that their honor is restored and go away. The town is saved.
What is wrong in this picture? Nothing that is explained in the two phrases cited above. What's wrong is that in this way I remove the opposition and give the "victory" to the players for free. Yes, it's the fruit of their choice to NOT ACT, but that is not satisfying.

In this case, I am rejecting this solution because it violates my sense of what is a good story and a good game. My tastes matters!

But doesn't this violate at least in part the "Your job is to make a town and find out what the Dogs do with it"? I think it does. That phrase doesn't talk of the kind of aesthetic decisions I just made. So, judging from that phrase, I went overboard and acted outside of my "jurisdiction".

By the other hand... If I don't reject that ending, I don't get to know what the Dogs would have done later with the Sorcerer.

Following the letter of that phrase would have made me violate that phrase. Why? Because if your instruction about how to drive a car is "you only have to stay on the road", and you don't teach me to drive, and don't allow me to do other things (like avoiding the other cars for example), I will not be able to stay on the road.

Can a book "teach how to drive"? I don't really know and this question would touch a frequent discussion between me and Ron about game manuals as teaching texts, so let's stay away from that: I am not saying that the game manual has to teach you that, I am saying that experience, real play, WILL teach you that, it will teach you things much more useful than "stay on the road".

Experience and my tastes are saying to me "killing them all like that is stupid", so let's discard that solution.

2) I could say to the players "nobody dies, they are not hit by any bullet". The first objection would be "wait, we talked about having a consistent and credible world. Having everybody miss is not credible!"
In reality...  it could happen and it really happened in similar situations lots of times. Shooting accuracy in western movies is increased to unrealistic levels, and we have here young warriors with poor training and a lot of tension, that must aim and shoot really quick to avoid losing the element of surprise. it could happen, in reality.
But it could not happen in a movie. It could not happen in a fiction. Not in a dramatic fiction, at least.
And I am not playing with reality, I am playing with fiction. All this is fiction. And must follow fiction's rules.

So... I can't save them all? Oh, no, I can, easily. I simply have to follow fiction's rules. I have to justify it.  A warrior is too nervous and shoot too soon. A rider see the warriors hidden behind the rocks (maybe the reflex of a gun barrel) and alert the others... and the ambush fails.

Who decide all this? Me. Who decides if the warriors are seen? Me. Who decide if they shoot too fast? Me. Who decides if the ambush works or not? Me.

Who decided that he didn't like to have the ambush fail? Me.

Why I didn't liked it, even if maintained the level of opposition from the Sorcerer intact? Because it didn't gave consequences to the Dog's choice of doing nothing.

Somebody had to die. Because the Dogs decided to do nothing.

Notice: this is totally outside the boundaries of the two phrases above. And I don't care. I have playing in games where the GM "saved" me from the consequences of my choices, and I loathed it.

I could continue this list of possible choices listing 10 cases with one rider dead ("rider A dead", "rider B dead", etc.), 45 possible choices with 2 riders dead ("riders A and B dead", "riders A and C dead", etc.), and more others, but let's summarize all this: I have really A LOT of possible choices, and the two phrases above don't help much (they simply added the "possible" word... but as we saw above, using the fiction's rules there is not a lot of things I can't do...)

If I was the impassible, objective witness that the two phrases point to...  I should simply roll dice. Roll a d10 to see how many die, roll that number of d10 to see who dies. Or any other "impartial" method.  Methods that I have seen fail, time and again, to generate anything remotely interesting in the fiction.

Seeing that these two phrases really don't tell me what I need to make that choice, what rules did I use?

The ones I learned playing this game, again and again:

1) Give weight to the dogs choices, never make them irrelevant.
2) Give necessity to the dog's choices, if they don't act things WILL go bad (don't make THEM irrelevant)
3) If you can, make the choices hard. They will love you for that and they will not be bored with easy choices.
4) There are demons around. If things can go bad, they WILL go bad. ("but... demons in this game are simply misfortune!" "And what definition of misfortune can you find better than 'things go bad'?")

(I did not get these "rules" only by playing DitV. I have seen them at work in a lot of western stories. The passengers in "stagecoach" could go the entire travel without meeting any indian. But they do. Because it makes for a better story)

THIS is "where I got that idea"

(and "idea" that it's NOT "to always search for ways for the Dogs' actions to turn bad", but it's... I don't really know how to explain it...... to look at the situation from the Devil's point of view!)

Let's return to that ambush.

1) Give weight to the dogs choices, never make them irrelevant. ---> somebody dies!

2) Give necessity to the dog's choices, if they don't act things WILL go bad (don't make THEM irrelevant) -----> Enough of Sister Mary's men remain to allow them to increase the circle of violence, again and again! The situation is NOT solved by NPCs with the Dogs that look and do nothing. Worse, the ones who die are the ones that did keep Mary from going too overboard: if the Dogs do nothing, THINGS WILL BE WORSE.

3) If you can, make the choices hard. They will love you for that and they will not be bored with easy choices. ----> if they sided with murderers just for spite...  make that more difficult. What if they murdered someone you liked?

4) There are demons around. I things can go bad, they WILL go bad. ----> thinks will go bad.

I am NOT talking about having "gotcha" moments where I diabolically laugh telling the players "do you remember the candy you gave to that child? He was allergic and now he's dead! Gotcha, suckers!".

I am talking about doing my part, with the band, to create the best song I can.

[lumpley]

Then I've got nothing! Carry on.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Moreno, my only quibble is that you have included the concept of self-knowledge with "asshole," missing the possibility that an asshole may have a quite mistaken perception of himself or herself. I think that your self-righteous, pious sorcerers fall within the definition of assholes perfectly. In other words, you're limiting the term too tightly, which in the context of this conversation means your sorcerous NPCs are lovely and perfect by the rules of the game. (Although I am alarmed to discover that I found a way to describe an asshole as lovely and perfect.)

But nuances of American-English profanity aside, I think we should get back to the topic: what preconceptions are brought to the table. Victor was absolutely right about that.This conversation is extremely well-timed for my current writing for Circle of Hands. Because I'm working specifically on instructions that provide direction to the reader without providing railroad to the play. You all know I've how many textual variations of "play the NPCs! with integrity!" I've provided in my games. It's great advice - except that it seems not to work.* Both the 2009 Trollbabe and the 2012 annotations for Sorcerer are my attempts to date to deal with it. Circle of Hands is another step on that same road.

I'll post a bit more about that as illustrated by our latest playtest when I get the chance.

* Oddly, whatever technique I'm using in Spione and Shahida does seem to work - people have no problem "playing NPCs" in those games" and not worrying about the "intentions" or "direction to go." I don't know why they're different.

[Moreno R.]

I hope this reply will not turn into a long-winded rant like the last one....

But nuances of American-English profanity aside, I think we should get back to the topic: what preconceptions are brought to the table. Victor was absolutely right about that.This conversation is extremely well-timed for my current writing for Circle of Hands. Because I'm working specifically on instructions that provide direction to the reader without providing railroad to the play. You all know I've how many textual variations of "play the NPCs! with integrity!" I've provided in my games. It's great advice - except that it seems not to work.* Both the 2009 Trollbabe and the 2012 annotations for Sorcerer are my attempts to date to deal with it. Circle of Hands is another step on that same road.

And...

* Oddly, whatever technique I'm using in Spione and Shahida does seem to work - people have no problem "playing NPCs" in those games" and not worrying about the "intentions" or "direction to go." I don't know why they're different.

My take on this: as I wrote in my (very verbose) last post, I don't think that "play the NPCs! with integrity!" is a goal at all. It's a boundary. It tells you in which field you have to play (the one where the GM play the NPC and play them with integrity), but it doesn't tell you the most important thing: your goal. As a player at the table, even if you are called "GM" or "Producer"

It's like, make someone who don't know the game to play poker. He ask you "what it's my goal in this game?" and your reply is "you play these card, without cheating" without telling him that his goal is to win money.

In my posts above I described the way I got to define my goals in playing Dogs in the Vineyard, and when I did, the game became much more easy to play as a GM.  And with that game I already had a very solid base in the town creation rules, that (contrary to what the game manual says) I consider "hard rules", to follow always, no matter ho much someone consider himself a "experience GM" ("Experienced GMs" are the worst ad GMing DitV the first times, they have to follow the town creation rules more strictly than anybody)

I have to admit that, even if I have GMed it for a string of something like 30-40 adventures lately, I still have not found a goal so  clear to me in Trollbabe. So it's still hit an miss, some adventures I instinctively know what I have to do, and I am able to play the NPCs with clarity and knowing how to "move" them.  Some other times, I really don't know what to do, I make them "do something" hoping that it will work: sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't and the session come out really flat.  In this game it really depends a lot on what the trollbabes do: if the players make them act in a really proactive way, they will "push" the NPCs, and then playing their reactions is usually easy.  If they don't, if they tread water, often I don't know what to do.
In Trollbabe is not usually a big problem because the GM's role is usually passive by design: it's the Trollbabes that do the pushing, so the game respond to the way they are played. But in other games, where the GM has a much more active role (like Sorcerer for example),  the lack (o unclarity) of a clear goal for the player called GM is much more disruptive.

Why it doesn't happen in Spione? Because in Spione, there a very clear goal, stated in the rules: the game manual doesn't tell you only to "play the NPCs with integrity", it does tell you, again and again, what you have to do with these characters!

Page 134: "Maneuvers create fictional situations, and these situations have one, single, definitive purpose: to place the spies into the Cold, by introducing ambiguity and danger."

You have to find the "place the spies into the cold" correspondent goal in Circle of Hands, to give the player called GM an objective in the game.

[lumpley]

You have to find the "place the spies into the cold" correspondent goal in Circle of Hands, to give the player called GM an objective in the game.

I totally agree! I was just thinking about how to compose a post saying this very thing.

-Vincent